we need the truth. you how dare you treat a woman like that. we need more time. for the fbi. the fbi has to do a more thorough search. abide, i hear biden would like to take me to the back of the barn. he would be in trouble. i would have been president 15 years ago if i had his accent. >> president trump did plenty of impressions last night, including repeatedly mocking the memory of dr. christine blasey ford who has accused supreme court nominee brett kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her as a student. one thing he did not bring up was that sweeping expose. the headline is jarring, quote, trump ebb gauged in suspect tax

schemes as he reaped riches from his father. according to the special investigation, trump is earning $200,000 in today's money by the age of three and was a millionaire by the age of 8. it's a far cry from this. >> i mean, my whole life really has been a no and i fought through it. i talk about it. it's not been easy for me. it has not been easy for me. i started off in brooklyn. my father gave me a small loan in 1975 and i built it into a company that's worth many, many billions of dollars with some of the greatest assets in the world. and i say that only because that's the kind of thinking that our country needs. >> you know, sometimes he had to walk half a mile just to get to his gold plated rolls-royce that his father gave him when he was like 4. you have this legendary dealmaker, trump the dealmaker

my dad gave me nothing. as he said, very, very hard for me. he was richie rich. his dad was shoveling $2 million to him by the time he was 8. and he came back to manhattan $9 billion in debt. what a legend, willie. >> i would love a small loan from my father. but first of all, joe, this is an extraordinary piece of reporting in the "new york times." takes up about 8 to 10 pages in

today's pair. but the long and short of it is through tax schemes, donald trump and his family, he arrived at about p$413 million from his father, not the $1 million loan he suggested. >> tough jennings, willie. you know, i really don't have a whole lot of room the talk here because you know what my dad gave me after college? >> what's that? >> $100 in eastern airline stock. >> a visionary. >> i've been living large ever since. >> all right. no, this is an incredible investigative report and we'll dig deeper into it later. with us, we have mike barnacle, john pedoritz -- >> his father gave him all of his sweaters. >> yes. >> my father never wore a sweater in his life. thank you very much. >> i like that you look

comfortable. >> i'm trying to convey an attitude of insuisance. >> me, too, john. me, too. >> speaking of insuisance, heidi prisbella is with us, too, guys. >> hey, i got a rusted grand am, guys. >> was that your dad's? >> yep. >> polish. okay. let's get to our lead story this morning, believe it or not. it's not this. we'll get right back to that investigation by the "new york times" in just a moment. but first, the fbi's investigation into the allegations against judge brett kavanaugh could be wrapped up as soon as today. two sources familiar with the matter tell nbc news that the probe could have been closed as early as last night. that comes as president trump said the sexual misconduct and assault allegations against kavanaugh mark a difficult time for young men in the country. the president made the remarks

as he departed the white house yesterday afternoon and reiterated his message, again, at his rally in mississippi last night where he also for the first time directly mocked dr. christine blasey ford. >> i say it's a very scary time for young men in america when you can be guilty of something that you may not be guilty of. this is a very, very -- this is a very difficult time. what's happening here has much more to do than even the appointment of a supreme court justice. it really does. you could be somebody that was perfect your entire life and somebody could accuse you of something. doesn't necessarily have to be a woman. but somebody could accuse you of something and you're automatically guilty. this is an important time for

our country. this is a time when your father, when your husband, when your brother, when your son could do great. mom, i did great in school. i've worked so hard. mom, i'm so pleased to tell you i just got a fantastic job with ibm. i just got a fantastic job with general motors. i just got -- i'm so proud. mom, a terrible thing just happened. a person who i've never met said that i did things that were horrible and they're firing me from my job, mom. i don't know what to do. mom, what do i do? what do i do, mom? what do i do, mom? it's a sad situation, okay. what he's going through, 36 years ago this happened. i had one beer. right? i had one beer.

well, do you think it was -- nope, it was one beer. how did you get home? >> i don't remember. where was the place? i don't remember. how many years ago was it? i don't know. i don't know. i don't know. what neighborhood was it in? where is the house? i don't know. upstairs, downstairs, where was it? but i had one beer. that's the only thing i remember. >> joe, this is why i said the day of the hearings that this is exactly what donald trump loves and wants, this type of issue, this type of problem with the supreme court nominee. because he loves to sow doubt in people. he loves to sort of shove in that vulgar disparaging angle toward -- one of the cruxes of this argument is due process and it's finding out the truth and it's something that i think good patriots, good men and women are all struggling with and trump

loves to bring it down into the ditch. he loves to disparage people and to hurt them and to bring kind of an ugly, ugly truth to this. and that is that you could hurt people with your words and trump does it from the podium of the presidency. i find it to be utterly disgusting. >> the president could have been giving a good argument about due process. when their reputation is on the line, we have to afford them due process.been we just do. we want to make sure that men and women alike are still considered to be innocent until proven otherwise. but, of course, that's not where he went. he went, like you said, down in the you mud. willie, it was -- it's

interesting that donald trump kept talk youing about what do i do, mom, what do i do, mom, and he talked about all these scenarios where innocent men could be framed. and yet it just wasn't quite as strong coming from a man who, if he had a chance to talk to his mom in 2016 would have said what do i do, mom? billy bush was wearing a hot mike and they caught me saying extraordinarily familiar things about women, mom. what do i do? do i lie about it? because it showed what i think of women. what was his what do i do mom moment and he plowed right through it. >> or allegedly, mom, i directed a payment to a former porn star with whom i had an affair while my wife was home with our child. john, president trump is making

a case that so many people agree with, which is that this woman, this dr. ford, this witness is not credible and judge kavanaugh is being railroaded by the media and by democrats. >> one, i think it's significant that the president who has -- who is very ginger and capable on this topic for two weeks, i think everyone says he's an intusive politician. but i think there is data, there is significant data that the cavanaugh, the treatment of cavanaugh is goosing republicans sentiment and sympathy. we see it in florida, mason dixennon poll in florida showed a closing in the governor's race that the pollster himself said might be due to kavanaugh. we see him polling in the dakotas that heidi heitkamp is now ten points behind in her

difficult re-election race with kavanaugh as the sympathy most important issue. i think they are seeing this may be a republican benefit precisely because dr. palacesy ford's system, however credible, it's a week out, we still don't have a single corroboration of an eyewitness or anybody like that to confirm her testimony and the testimony of the two other supposed victims of kavanaugh's degradations, one of them seems to have completely collapsed in credibility and there's no established truth to the ramirez allegations, either, thus giving strength to the idea that kavanaugh has been unfairly treated, has not gotten due process and trump is playing on that. i don't think this is a sign of the general move in this direction. >> here is the politics of it.

senator majority leader mitch mcconnell promises that the senate will move forward and vote on the nomination of brett kavanaugh. >> we will be voting this week. so the fbi report will be finished and we will be voting this week on the kavanaugh nomination. >> but it still remains uncertain if republicans have enough votes to confirm president trump's pick to the supreme court. key republican senators jeff flake, susan collins and lisa murkowski are declining to say how they will vote until they see what the fbi reports back. democrats heidi heitkamp and joe mancion have refused to reveal their vote until the investigation is in. and new polling showing the the pressure they are fwasing with their confirmation votes.

in west virginia, 58% of voters support kavanaugh's nomination and 28% say they're opposed to it. joe. >> mike barnacle, there has been a tightening since all of this began. a lot of republicans have come home in the state of florida in the gulillum race. he was comfortably ahead. you can go to other races showing the races tightening. i'm just wondering do you think perhaps donald trump did see data that shows that this is driving conservative, the conservative voting base back home back to their tribe? because whether -- because of what john pedorance said or because of what many people in the media have been seen to rush to go judgment. >> of course he did. of course he did, joe.

and it plays exactly to donald trump's strength. as we've said many times in this program and elsewhere, the one thing he is an expert in is resentment and specifically in this case, white male resentment. so he's using it, he used it yesterday to further the cause of his candidates of conservatism and of whatever else he has in his mind. we don't know what else is on his mind. we don't want to know what is on his mind. but this is the first time in the lifetime of this country, joe, that we have a president of the united states who literally, almost every day, takes to the country in order to divide the country. that is what he did yesterday, spectacularly successful. do you know covering washington, covering both the house and the

senate of anyone who has plans today to stand up and say, hey, what the president did last night and the night before and the night before that is just wrong. >> no, i know of no one. but i do have some data that i think has not gotten out enough and is really underappreciated that explains not only trump's conduct, but the response that trump got to his conduct last night. and that is this. a week ago, we see an nbc poll that asked the question if the allegations by dr. blasey ford against brett kavanaugh are true, true, should he still be confirmed? and here was the results. 54% of republicans said yes. these are the numbers that i call so what if true. it's probably a discussion we need to have in this country when you have so many people who

believe -- i'm reading into this the -- that this is just boys will be boys behavior that explains some of the anger that you see there and the mocking and even the sample poll groups that we've seen, like the women. do you remember the round table the of women that cnn held about a week or two ago people were making fun of. they just said, i don't get it. boys will be boys. there's the due process question that john talked about it, but i'm sure a lot of other people feel maybe he's not getting due process because there are no corroborators. but they're not talking to the potential corroborators, at least in some important cases like deborah ramirez. i've been covering this very closely. i've been in touch with people

who believe they have material evidence and they cannot get through to the fbi. my source yesterday, carrie bircham, sent me some of the information about how much she's done to try and get back to the fbi. >> you know, mika, we talked about this before that over the weekend, we were at different events that we were surprised that it was in both their houses. he had people attacking dr. -- or the judge, judge kavanaugh and saying that he wasn't -- he didn't have -- he wasn't templermentally fit to be a judge. they were attacking the republicans. but the part that you don't really see in the media that much is they were also attacking the democratic senators and quite a few people that we talk to raised questions about dr.

ford's story. that's something in 24/7 news coverage, at least in mainstream media, you never hear anyone talk about. they feel like if there were no corroborating witnesses, they will get absolutely slammed. the media coverage of this has been so one-sided, that every single allegation made against the judge was true. and i say this again as somebody who said before the allegations i didn't think he should be on the supreme court that this is what happened in the run up to the trump election. not even considered the possibility that donald trump might win. so they were shocked by it.

nobody has dared say, even the republicans, that part of dr. ford's story just might not add us. so you have the complete absence in the mainstream media. you have conservatives saying to each other, but, wait a second. there's no this, there's no that. so then donald trump goes and he says it. and it is like light ago keg on fire. and i will say not just because donald trump divides every day in a week that is unbecoming of a president, but because the media has also given donald trump a massive opening and they allow him to light dynamite and blow the whole thing up. >> the story should speak for itself. even in the world of opinion television, we should just cover it. still ahead on "morning joe" -- >> well, mika, it has not just

been covered. >> no, i know. >> and it's not been covered and it's been one sided. >> i agree. >> i have turned on -- >> that's my point. >> i have turned on all networks at all times and brett kavanaugh has been accused of being a serial rapist by columnists in national newspapers calling him a serial rapist and what have we said here from the beginning? neither one of us supporting bref brett kavanaugh's supreme court nomination, me from the second that he said he wouldn't answer whether the congress or the president could ban people from the united states based solely on their race. that's unbecoming. at the same time, you want to understand why republicans are in trouble right now? republicans in trouble are doing better in polls right now and donald trump is playing into that heytread? it's because the media has dropped the ball on this from the very beginning and they've been bias.

they've been one-sided. and they're once again going be shocked by what they say in the polls. >> it's a good parallel. still ahead, legal analyst says he knows brett kavanaugh but he wouldn't vote to confirm him. he explains why. plus, donald trump didn't just have a trust fund. he had three. he didn't just get holiday gifts. he got $10,000 christmas checks. he didn't just make money off buildings. he got money from the laundry services inside of them. the "new york times" breaks down the many ways trump reaped the rewards from his and his father's tax schemes. that's all ahead on "morning joe." n "morning joe. a once-in-five hundred year storm should happen every five hundred years, right? fact is, there have been twenty-six in the last decade. allstate is adapting. with drones to assess home damage sooner. and if a flying object damages your car, you can snap a photo and get your claim processed in hours, not days.

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chief ben lawfair. his new people is entitled i know brett kavanaugh, but i wouldn't confirm him. also with us, former assistant united states attorney in the criminal division on the u.s. attorney's office for the southern district of new york. he has a new piece for msnbc.com. a think site that takes a critical look at the letter that gop prosecutor rachel mitchell sent about christine blasey ford's potential case. fascinating angles here with these guests. joe. >> thank you so much for being with us, benjamin, and thank you for the law fair podcast. it's the only way i get through the day. it's extraordinary. >> thank you. >> so let's talk about brett kavanaugh. i was just going on a little rant before that i thought that there were a lot of wild accusations going out there. but that being said, still wouldn't want him on the supreme court for a lot of reasons.

you actually know him and believe he shouldn't be on the supreme court. why that? >> i've known brett kavanaugh for years. i've always liked him. i was excited when he was nominated because it struck me as by far the most attractive nominee that among the people that trump was considering and he's somebody who i've always thought of as a distinguished conservative judge whose career i have admired. i believe christine blasey's ford story as presented before the senate judiciary committee is frankly more credible and believable than his defense against it. i also believe he did not show the sort of candor about a range of things that one should expect

and demand from a supreme court nominee or any judge, even when under intense personal pressure of the sort that he's clearly under. and i also think he shows a frankly partisan and conspear the tollal streak that in my experience with him i have never seen before and i was deeply shocked by. and for all of those reasons, i was just left after thursday thinking that i cannot support his nomination any more. >> there were some people who watched judge kavanaugh opens the testimony and you thought, even if he's not guilty of what he's accused of here, the temple he showed in that room, the hot headedness and a bit of a clinton bent, he is sounded

political. are you convinced by those arguments that even if the dr. ford accusation doesn't hold up, his performance on thursday means he shouldn't be on the bench? >> he think if you imagine that he is wholly, wholly innocent of everything she has accused him of, that is an extremely hard question in the sense that i can totally understand how somebody in that circumstance would be excessive and would let emotion run away with him. and i go back and forth with myself, whether independently i would be unable to forgive that if i believed the substance of the allegations to be wholly without merit. that said, i think the temperament that he showed and the partisanship he showed are deeply upsetting. and i don't know how you ask a

reasonable pro choice democrat to be comfortable with his sitting on a case that might overturn roe v. wade or any other issue on which the parties are split after he has looked the country in the eye and said this whole thing about christine blasey ford is simply a function of conspiracies lying in wait for him. once you've done that, you've kind of ripped the bandade off the wound and short of showed a side of yourself that is really not what we want in a justice. >> ben, can i just point out

that on september 21st, you said kavanaugh should withdraw his own nomination because christine blasey ford's claims seemed credible to you and that the burden of proof was on him? i would argue that this attitude, that the burden of proof was on can kavanaugh is precisely the attitude that has caused the republican surge and it leads me to question, you know, the -- you said before his testimony that he should withdraw his nomination. so now that you're saying that he should withdraw his nomination because his temperament was bad and he was too partisan leaves me to believe that you came in the with a fixed attitude and that it is not entirely, you know -- this is not entirely a discovery that you just made after the testimony. >> so let me both agree with you and contradict you. first of all, i did come with a fixed attitude. i came in the with a mixed

attitude that ibltd the burden was on brett kavanaugh as i think the burden is always on the nominee in a situation in which questions have arisen and you have to get to 50 votes. you bear the burden of nomination. >> but we're talking about burden of proof about blasey ford's allegations, not about get to go 51. that is not what you said. >> actually, it is what i said. there are -- if you're a nominee and somebody is -- and the outstanding issue about your nomination is an allegation against you and you don't have 50 votes, the burden of proof is, in fact, on you. >> okay. i want to quote you. here is what you said. the only plausible defense nower for him is self-explicaion. that's a moral claim, not a political claim.

>> so i mean -- >> the burden of proof is on him to disprove christine blasey ford's allegations that i think is a horrible standard. >> so two things. one is if you read the article carefully, i made both a normative and a descriptive argument as to it. i stand by the normative claim. but i also want to say, look, i did come in with a fixed presumption, also, that brett kavanaugh would be a good justice and would be somebody who i would, you know, want to see confirmed under normal circumstances. i also want to say i did not say he should withdraw. i said he should withdraw if he is unable to defend himself in a persuasive fashion without attacking her.

and i think he answered that question pretty decisively. he was not able to defend himself and he had to go on attack against the senate judiciary committee, democrats and other unnamed and named liberals and democrats. and i don't think that is an appropriate wait for a nomination to the supreme court should behave. >> rachel mitchell has a strong opinion. she has no vote. rachel mitchell is the woman hired by the republican majority as a prosecutor to ask questions instead of the senators asking questions. she maintained in a memo that she provided the committee that no rational prosecutor would bring charges against judge

kavanaugh. tell us why. >> she went even further and she said not only is it a case of beyond a reasonable doubt, but it's also not a preponderance of the evidence. rachel mitchell's memo is a microcosm of the problems we're seeing with this cavanaugh nomination. she simply evaluated in i think a very slanted way dr. fords's testimony. this whole dynamic was set up falsely as a he said/she said. and i say falsely because there was no investigation done prior to the hearing. and as a prosecutor, she should know better that you cannot assess a case unless you do an investigation unless in the unusual case we have here there is a third person alleged to be there and you don't interview that person. what is even worse is that her memo, which is set up as a he said/she said does not even evaluate the he or what he said.

and i think what we are seeing now is it is still not a complete investigation. i feel bad for my former colleagues at the the fbi because i am certain that they would like to do a real investigation where they follow leads, they look for documentary evidence, they speak to all wednesday who may have information about this and they can do that in a short period of time. it may well be that this investigation doesn't support dr. ford's allegations or to contradict what brett kavanaugh said. in that case, there's a much better case for brett kavanaugh to be confirmed.

but without that full investigation, we're left with a rigged system and a hollow assessment that there is no corroboration. well, there's no corroboration if you don't look for corroboration and that's ultimately the problem that we're dealing with. >> but the fbi has now interviewed mark judge. why wouldn't the fbi go back and talk to dr. ford and go back and talk to judge kavanaugh so they can say we couldn't do the investigation the way we would typically do it, but we did talk to all the relevant and key witnesses here? >> so what we're hearing is that the white house -- because it's a background investigation, not a criminal investigation. although i think that's the only difference. it still should be an investigation into the allegations which should include brett kavanaugh's truthfulness because that goes very much to his defense of the allegations.

but what we -- the concern that we have here is that the white house is saying, well, she already testified. and she gave a long opening statement. she has said everything she has to say. if the fbi were allowed to do this properly, though, they would go and they would meet with her and they would try to piece together the incident in lots of different ways which they're very skilled at doing. they would try to jog her memory, try to identify the house, maybe go find the house, see if it matches her description, etcetera. they would meet with brett kavanaugh and brett kavanaugh would not be able to deflect and evade the questions as he did the at the hearing. he would not be able to answer questions with questions. he would have to be pinned down. >> why aren't they asking tohos questions? >> in any investigation, they would meet with the critical witnesses. but the white house is not

allowing that. >> we should point out that here, the white house is the client. >> and that's unfortunate for the fbi because they're going to come out looking bad. >> so ben, thank you very much. appreciate your being on the show this morning. daniel, stay with us. donald trump likes to say he got a very small loan of $1 million from his father. >> small. >> which he used to build his empire. but the "new york times" claims he got much, much more than that. we're digging into that explosive report ahead on "morning joe." explosive report ahead on "morning joe." i know that every single time that i suit up,

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it was this alice in wonderland moment where we got these documents. we didn't want anybody to see the stuff. so we had them set up a room and only the three of us had access to the room. >> we were incredibly fortunate to have sources who were able to give us access to over 200 different tax returns.

there are tax returns of trump companies, trump partnerships, trump trusts. fred trump's estate tax returns is in the building right now. it's incredible that we have it. and that opened a door to understanding a huge transfer of wealth that happened and gave us so much more information to be able to understand the tax games that were played. and then once you sort of pull this string, the whole thing unraveled. >> a look there at showtime's new documentary that follows the team of "new york times" investigative reporters as they uncovered the information that led to the exclusive report about trump's taxes. the film debuts this sunday night and we're going to have much more from the explosive report straight ahead. but, joe, you have something else on your mind right now, apparently. >> i do this morning. willie, we've been ripped off

again. >> what? no, you haven't. >> how many times have people taken our experiments and used them to win nobel prizes. >> did they do it again this year? >> they did it again this year. >> come on. >> professors claiming they discovered to use laser to bend and hook molecules. we did that. >> come on. >> we also use those same leasers to have cats chase them on walls. >> that is ridiculous. that is what you do with meatball all day. that's what he does. >> i can remember going up to fairfield county when you and joe were doing the laser things out in the field and you had the cat there running and everything. >> ripped off again. i'll tell you, mike, we get no respect. neither to the chicago cubs. what a game last night, man. what a game last night. >> you know, there's nothing like playoff baseball, joe, as you know. nothing like it. in last night's game, 13 innings, kept me up until 12:45 in the morning.

cubs lose, put the storm windows down the today. it's over for them. but it was a great game to watch. every inning brought you something new including -- i don't know whether we have the clip. i think it it was 10th or the 11th inning, biaz, the third the baseman hugging in the middle of the infield. my god, bring on playoff baseball. it's the only thing that keeps us away from trump for a while. so let's stay with it. >> and i'll tell you, willie geist, i would pay good money for a seven-game series between the yankees and the a's. i think that's one of the most fascinating matchups in baseball. the a's, the hottest team in the second half of the season. you look at what the yankees have done with a supposedly bad season. they've won over a hundred games. all of their key players have been hurt all year. this would be a great alcs

series. we're not going to see it. instead, it all comes down to one game tonight. who are you looking for? >> it is. and it makes you really, really nervous. you can have a hundred-win season and it all comes crumbling down in one game. we're hoping for good things. we were talking to michael lewis. he was here yesterday. this is the ultimate money ball game. this is the a's with a $62 million payroll. and it may not matter if the a's play well tonight. they move on to fenway. >> but, mike, i understand. it's the first time this has happened since 19 what. the a's are going to be starting a pitcher that didn't get a single win all season. why did they -- it was a bizarre choice. >> well, it's baud melvin, one of the best managers in baseball. he doesn't have the kind of staff the yankees have. where they can short continue game to five innings and then go to your bullpen. so he's going to start with a

closer and he's going to have a series of closers probably up until the third or fourth inning and bring in one of his starters. it's worked so far. again, the magic of it is one and done. the other team goes home. now to breaking news this morning, the u.n.'s highest court has just ordered the u.s. to lift some sanctions on iran. the ruling is legally binding, but the question is whether the president will comply. we'll talk to former national securities state department and white house official richard clark. "morning joe" is coming right back. "morning joe" is coming right back

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joining us now former senior white house add vier to three united states presidents, richard clark, his 2017 book "warnings" is out now in paper back and he's also the host of the new podcast future state, a ten-episode series examining the issues shaping american history and politics leading into the midterm elections and beyond. richard, good morning. >> good to be here.

>> tell us about the podcast, it's already rolled out a bunch of the episodes, what are you focusing on and what impact do you think it will have on the midterms? >> it bothered me that there are few places that you can go and get long form hour long discussion in-depth on not the shining bouncing ball of the day but the i wish auto us that we used to talk about in elections. so we are talking about american foreign policy, we are talking about security issues, cybersecurity, terrorism. i'm having conversations with the experts that i would go to, experts i worked with or worked for. so it's bill clinton, madeline albright, wendy sherman, susan rice, nick grass mass son having the kind of in-depth conversation that we do around my dinner table. >> do you think as you referenced the midterms here that foreign policy will play into the way people vote.

>> not at all. >> so much so that it feels domestic now. >> not at all. it's not being discussed and we're throwing away 50 years -- >> correct. >> -- of american leadership. all the institutions that america built for 50 years we're throwing away and for no good reasons. one of the episodes with susan rice is called "america, the incredible shrinking super power." we are losing influence every day and you don't get it back in a year or two. if you get a new president at some point you don't get this leadership back because we betrayed our allies and they are not going to forget that. >> how do you explain the consequences which are to come, maybe they are not vivid now before our eyes, but this is what my father talked about. >> exactly. >> all the strategic partnerships that have been worked on for so many years. >> and that he helped build. >> that he helped build along with many, many others. >> right. >> and there seems to be a void on many levels. >> well, a, we are not talking

about t we are talking about the shining bouncing ball of the day. b, no one is connecting it to the every person in ohio. what difference does it make to the person in ohio? well, it does. it makes a difference in their wallet, it makes a difference in their national security, even in places like ohio and michigan and pennsylvania. >> i think you could agree, though, that trade clearly is some kind of an electoral issue and we have these sort of relatively cosmetic moves on nafta with mexico and canada and the real possibility of a significant trade war with china, and it would appear that trump's electoral base likes and supports a lot of it, even though there are serious pocketbook issues -- >> because it hasn't bitten them yet. >> there are farming issues and there's steel and lumber issues that are pretty significant. that is a foreign policy issue. >> it is a foreign policy issue. we're running up the national debt and going into debt using chinese money to pay off the

debt so that we can pay american farmers for not selling things to china. i mean, it's insane. and no one is going into that kind of discussion in the election that i see. >> dan. >> well, it's interesting, richard, that, you know, when you talk about trade, which seems to be something that trump brings up and you mentioned how we're borrowing money from china to pay farmers not to sell food to china, but how -- you know, from our standpoint where we're looking here and we see trump last night talking about everything unrelated to that, how do you square up sort of what, you know, the average citizen can do who is interested in these things, how can it become more relevant in today's political environment? >> well, we have to have politicians who are willing to talk about it and i think a lot of politicians today think they have to talk about whatever shiny ball trump throws. it's like trump throwing the

paper towels in puerto rico. every day he throws a political hand grenade into our national dialogue and we talk about that and we don't talk about the things that we should talk about, the things that are important and over the long-term are making america less safe and less powerful. >> well, there will be a new episode of future state every monday until election day. richard clarke, thank you very much for being on this morning. good to see you again. coming up, forget friday, sources tell nbc news that brett kavanaugh's fbi background check could end today. we'll talk to a senior member of the senate judiciary committee, democrat dick durbin. plus a rising star in the democratic story, jason candor, drops out of the race for kansas city mayor and makes his private mental health battle public. "morning joe" is coming right back. battle public. "morning joe" is coming right ckba so, that goal you've been saving for,

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senate will vote on judge kavanaugh here on this floor this week. >> senate majority leader mitch mcconnell promises that the senate will move forward and vote on the nomination of brett kavanaugh. the fbi's investigation into the allegations against judge kavanaugh could be wrapped as soon as today. two sources familiar with the matter tell nbc news that the probe could have been closed as early as last night. welcome back to "morning joe." it is wednesday, october 3rd. with us we have msnbc

contributor mike barnicle, former assistant united states attorney in the criminal division of the u.s. attorney's office for the southern district of new york, daniel goldman, professor at princeton university eddie glaude jr. there is a new title. what is that? >> james s. mcdonald distinguished university professor. >> distinguished. oh, my goodness. >> congratulations. >> wow. >> he is on set with joe? >> political writer for "the new york times" nick confessore and yamish el sandor. we will get to the ritchie rich story in just a moment. there's checks here, fred trump's transfers to his kids and it all indicates that donald trump didn't get a million dollar loan from his daddy, which is a lot, but millions. >> yeah. >> many, many, many millions. >> you know, mika -- >> ritchie rich was worth $8

million. ritchie rich was worth $8 million when he was eight years old and then a half a million almost -- half a billion almost transferred to the kids and donald took his to atlantic city. got $8 billion in debt and now apparently some really shady tax schemes in there. who would have ever seen that coming? >> i don't know. >> willie, really quickly about the kavanaugh investigation. first of all, i have to say it's got to warm the cockles of your heart that eddie glaude is in your old chair at princeton now. >> he is. >> that's great. that is great stuff. first of all -- >> i voted against him. i should be transparent about that, but i'm glad he's there any way. >> secondly, i don't understand something. i don't understand a lot of things, but this is what i don't understand right now. jeff flake said he would give

them his vote if they got a week investigation, fbi investigation, not w-e-a-k but w-e-e-k investigation into kavanaugh and it turned up nothing untoward. we are at wednesday, they haven't actually talked to the key players in this, the principals in this, and they're saying that they could have shut it down last night. i don't understand that and i don't understand how that changes murkowski or collins or flake's position because they're not -- they're not running the full investigation. >> well, if the idea of this investigation is jeff flake and chris coons and other deemed it up was to give cover perhaps to republicans to say, look, we looked into this but independent third party investigative body to give them cover to vote yes and say they say they cleared judge kavanaugh. well, now by not interviewing

dr. ford and not interviewing judge kavanaugh as part of this fbi inquiry as dan goldman said it's not really a full fbi investigation, it's an inquiry, now you're giving open to democrats and other people to say this isn't a real investigation so how could you possibly vote yes and i'm not going to change my vote from no based on anything that comes out of it. so this whole week long pause was supposed to give some clarity to it and i'm afraid by leaving out the two key witnesses, although they did testify under oath before the senate, only clouds it further and makes it more controversial when the vote finally comes up later this week. >> mike, why wouldn't you want to hear from the principals? i mean, it's nonsense to say, oh, well, we heard them read from prepared remarks, but, you know, conservatives want to learn some things about dr. ford, they want to get at what she said to the psychiatrist that may have contradicted her testimony before the senate. liberals want to hear more from

judge kavanaugh. they want them to talk to people that are going to have very different stories about how kavanaugh behaved during college and law school and whether he was lying before the senate last week. >> yeah, well, joe, you would want to hear from all of the principals but in this case this is not a full scale investigation, it's not even an investigation really, it's an extension of an existing background check that's been done and the important thing to remember is, as dan goldman pointed out to us earlier and we should be reminded of it all the time as we talk about this, the fbi in this case is the client of the white house. they are getting their marching orders most likely from don mcgahn, the white house counsel, daniel, who has a list of what the white house wants to have full field in terms of this background investigation and by design, intent or by accident what's going to happen i would ask you is it not going to happen that the fbi is going to get unfairly blamed for not

having conducted as full an investigation as most people would like to have seen done. >> absolutely. and even more so because all of the public statements from the white house, from donald trump, from sarah sanders, from kellyanne conway are all in support of a full investigation, sort of shifting the responsibility for the investigation on the fbi, whereas it seems in the background through the white house counsel's office they're putting a lot of restrictions on what the fbi can do. i am certain that if the fbi had unfettered access to do whatever they want they would be speaking to brett kavanaugh, they would be speaking to dr. ford, they would be speaking to a lot more witnesses, they would be doing a lot of additional searches in terms of trying to identify documents or -- such as mark judge's employment records or trying to identify the house. there are a lot of steps that the fbi would ordinarily take and the one thing i would disagree with you a little bit,

mike, about is, yes, this is a background investigation, but when you have credible allegations about someone's character, someone's truthfulness, you have to follow up on those and try to determine whether or not those are legitimate concerns. the only way to do that is through a normal investigation. yes, it's not a criminal investigation, there is no subpoena power, but you would take the same steps that you would take in a criminal investigation in order to figure out whether or not these allegations are true. the fbi will not say they are true, they aren't true, but they will gather all of the facts that will either contradict what brett kavanaugh is saying or will be consistent with brett kavanaugh is saying and then the senators will be able to assess that information, but this should be a full information and it does not appear that it is. >> all right. now to the extraordinary and white house testify "new york times" exposé that appears to

shatter the president's claim of being a self-made billionaire while implicating him in sketchy, possibly illegal tax schemes. the 19 month long investigation found that temp received today's equivalent of $400 million from his father's real estate empire beginning as a toddler and continuing to this day. as the "times" reports much of the money came from trump because he helped his parents dodge taxes in the 1990s. he and his siblings set up a sham corporation to disguise millions of dollars in gifts from their parents, records and interviews show -- records indicate that trump helped his father take improper tax deductions worth millions more. he also helped formulate a strategy to undervalue his parents' real estate holdings by hundreds of millions of dollars on tax returns, sharply reducing the tax bill when those properties were transferred to

him and his siblings. tax experts tell the "times" that the president is unlikely to face criminal prosecution for tax evasion because the statute of limitations has passed on any possible wrongdoing. but as the "times" reports, there is no time limit on civil fines for tax frauds. the new york state damages department is reviewing the allegations. >> the report continues fred trump was relentless and creative in finding ways to channel his wealth to his children. he made donald not just his salaried employee but also his property manager, landlord, banker and consultant. he gave them loan after loan, many never repaid. he provided money for donald's cars, money for his employees, money for his first manhattan offices. he gave him three trust funds, he gave him shares in multiple partnerships, he gave him $10,000 christmas checks and he gave him laundry revenue from his buildings. according to the investigation

trump was earning $200,000 in today's dollars by age three and was a millionaire by the age of eight. by the time donald was 17 his father had given him part ownership of a 52-unit apartment building. once he graduated from college the times found trump was receiving the equivalent of a million dollars a year from his dad. that money reportedly increased over time to more than $5 million a year in his 40s and his 50s. according to the times the findings are based on interviews with fred trump's former employees, tens of thousands of pages of confidential records, bank statements, financial audits, accounting ledgers, cash disbursement reports, invoices and canceled checks as well as public records like mortgages, deeds and civil court files. nbc news has not independently seen those documents or confirmed the totality of the times reporting. nick confessore, for the record donald trump's camp says the story is false and highly

defamatory but does say the tax matters were handled by other members of the trump family and tax lawyers, not by donald himself. >> no, right. >> so, no, in fact, trump was deeply involved in the tax planning, the estate planning with his father, he was part of all of these schemes and the reason is that they benefited him chiefly. what you're seeing here is what we see a lot in america in this country which is the determination of very wealthy people to pass their fortunes on to their kids untaxed and this family was extraordinarily creative in how they did it. i think the part that stuck out to me most in this amazing report by colleagues of mine was that this is a man, donald trump, who has been on the record lying about the size of his fortune, but the way he accumulated his fortune was lying in the other direction about the value of real estate assets. what they did time and time again was systematically and grossly just undervalue the buildings owned by the trump family and say that they weren't worth anything and then pass them to other people in the

family, pass them from trump sr. to donald trump. >> there's one other aspect that stuck out. there was so much in here, it's just an incredible piece of journalism. and, joe, as an aside, i mean, with he no he that mr. trump loves to apply nicknames to people, he always has throughout his campaign and everything. we now have a nickname for the president, i would suggest, and it would be thanks, dad. it's thanks, dad, trump. but, know, this is interesting and i found it interesting. way down in this piece and it deserves to be read by everyone, it gets to who donald trump really is. it builds up the case and points out how many times trump's father, fred, afforded him the opportunity, gave him all sorts of money to bail him out of certain difficult financial situations that donald trump had buried himself in. here is the paragraph: but over time as donald trump careened

from one financial disaster to the next, his father found ways to give him substantially more money, records show. even so, in 1990 according to previously secret depositions mr. trump tried to have his father's will rewritten in a way that fred trump alarmed and angered feared could result in his empires being used to bail out his son's failing businesses. so in addition to being a tax cheat, a fraud and a crook, we find out from "the new york times" in all of this material that they have provided that donald trump was also a scheming son. >> who was according to the report scheming to change his father's will to bail himself out in a way that scared his father. i mean, more than a few people have gone to jail for that. eddie glaude, this doesn't

really surprise, i'm sure, doesn't surprise you, doesn't surprise many people that the entire myth that droumpd has tried to create around himself, this billionaire dealmaker who started with very little, said it was hard, every step of the way his life has been hard, it's just his entire life story is built on a lie. this kid was treated like the queen's version of ritchie rich, he's got, you know, millions of dollars by the time he's eight years old because daddy gave him the money, daddy kept pouring more money into his bank accounts when he got in trouble, when he proved that he actually wasn't a good businessman, and then finally goes to atlantic city and completely blows all of his father's money, the hundreds of millions of dollars that his father transferred to him, goes bankrupt, $9 billion by his own claims, bankrupt $9 billion and chances are very good that he's

exaggerating what he's worth now and he's probably worth less than he was when his father gave him all that money. >> yes, joe, three pick points. one, we know that he wasn't born with gold spoon in his mouth but a platinum spoon in his mouth and he blew his inheritance in sorts of ways. i'm reminded of herman millvale's 1867 novel "the confidence man" and that's what donald trump is because he evoked the phrase a while back. his own geography, the way in which he presents himself, he is a can have dance man selling a particular kind of snake oil to the country and anyone who might believe him. what's interesting in the "new york times" piece, the times even admits it was complicit in building this image of him. that he sold this to them and to other people in the press. and lastly what is, i think, important here, joe, is that we see this history, this pattern,

it's almost inherited tax fraud. tax evasion. a kind of crookedness as mike laid out, with he see it passed on to him, which means it's even more important that we should see his tax forms, right, because more than likely what he learned from his dad, we will find he did himself and he continues to do. >> some would call this really it matches the profile of a man who has grown up with no responsibility, just awash in cash, no sense of right and wrong and brings his sham to the presidency where ultimately possibly the emperor will have no clothes. an attorney for the president released the following statement, "the new york times" -- well, because -- you know what i'm saying. >> we're laughing at joe's reaction to your true comment. >> it's true. >> willie and i are going to have to talk about that this weekend at the holiday inn while we're smoking.

>> we will need a few extra cartons in those camel unfiltered. >> we're talking about melville and not the melville book you think but "the confidence man." >> "the new york times" allegations of fraud and tax evasion are 100% false the white house says and highly defamatory. it was his attorney. there was no fraud or tax evasion by anyone. the facts upon which the times bases its false allegations are extremely inaccurate. all estate matters were handled by licensed attorneys, licensed cpas and licensed real estate appraisers who followed all laws and rules strictly. >> hold on. isn't that like -- mika, a licensed this, licensed -- doesn't mean they weren't cheating for him. which white house person had said that something was true because they sent it certified mail, like the first week.

>> remember his doctor, the guy -- the crazy -- >> certified doctor. certified doctor said he was the healthiest guy ever. >> exactly. it's all so certified. the statement continues: president trump had virtually no involvement whatsoever with these matters. the affairs were handled by other trump family members who were not experts themselves and, therefore, relied entirely upon the aforementioned licensed professionals. should the times state or imply that president trump participated in fraud, tax evasion or any other crime, it will be exposing itself to -- oh, he is he going to sue them -- to substantial liability and damages for defamation. where have we heard that before? go ahead, mike. >> damaged goldman, let me ask you, donald trump's sister mary ann is a sitting federal judge. what if her name is on any of these tax returns that have been filed over the years that constitute fraud?

>> well, we would run into a situation where the only way that a judge can be removed is technically through impeachment, but if there is misconduct by mary anne trump and we don't know at all whether there is at this point, then it would be referred to a judicial committee to look into it in order to assess it. what we're seeing in this piece, i think, that's interesting is you guys have really pinpointed some of the hypocrisy of donald trump being a self-made man on the campaign trail whereas in reality his father was his lifeline for all of his poor business dealings. but from a legal perspective you see overinflated invoices, like you would have a contractor give an invoice to a subcontractor and overinflate the work so that they could get a kickback. that's essentially what some of the allegations are. there are bogus loans that is a hallmark of fraud where you say i will give you a loan and then it just is never paid back, it's not actually a loan.

there's a story about his father dumping $3.3 million of casino chips at one of his casinos to give him enough operating cash to meet all of his needs. and then the other thing that's really interesting and you pointed out earlier is there are different representations of the value of his properties in official filings. so they undervalue it when it's convenient and then they overvalue the same property when it's convenient as well and that is -- that's another hallmark of fraud. none of this can be charged criminally because it's statute of limitations, but certainly the irs could go back and look at it from a civil perspective. >> so you've been doing a lot of work on trump supporters and, in fact, trump voters steadfast support for donald j. trump regardless of what they may see in the news. this is the sort of story that might impact past presidents, but will it even raise an eyebrow in trump country? >> well, i think what we really

see is that this is about the myth of the american dream and there are people that will look at this and say, well, wouldn't anybody want their dad to give them millions of dollars? isn't this what you want for your children, for you to be able to fund them and to have their dreams come true and when they mess up to help them out and be the safety net for your child. so i think in some ways i read that story and thought this would in some ways want to be what we think the american dream is. the problem is that president trump built this entire brand on this idea that he pulled himself up by his boot straps and so many of his supporters say that's what's so appealing to him, the fact that i could be donald trump, that anybody could be donald trump, when in fact anybody can't be donald trump because you would need a parent to be funneling money to you back to back. i think the other thing that's important is this is someone who is now in charge of policy. his administration has said through ben carson that poverty is a state of mind and they are making policies, rewriting the tax code, doing all these things in this way anything that people are somehow not working hard

enough and that's why you didn't become donald trump when in reality it's because your dad didn't give you millions of dollars whenner you were eight years old and some people when they go to yale their grandfather didn't go to yale like brett kavanaugh and as a result not everyone might get into yale because there's obviously thoughts given to legacy students. so what you have is a lot of people in this country thinking i want to be like donald trump and that's why i want to follow him, but in reality you have to do a lot of stuff to do that. >> another problem, i think, politically it may not raise its read politically in the midterms, but if donald trump seeks reelection, his story of being this great dealmaker that as he said in 2016 started with next to nothing and it was every step of the way was hard for him, that's undercut and it is attached to the policies that you're talking about when you have a tax bill that donald trump signed and that -- used at mar-a-lago with his billionaire

friends saying i just made you a lot of money today with these tax cuts that are overwhelmingly unpopular. doesn't this all fit together politically, donald trump getting his money from his daddy, using illegal tax schemes, the rich getting richer, protecting themselves while the poor are getting poorer and the middle class are struggling. >> i think reading this story democrats are starting to find their talking points for 2020 because there is this idea now that you can say when you think about the rich and the poor, donald trump was up there and he's been up there for a long time and he is not looking out for you because he doesn't even understand what it would be to not have money because his father kept baling him out. that idea also that he was trying to change his father's will, i think democrats will probably be talking about that saying not only was this someone who got money from his parents and really was continuing to be someone who was propped up, but then when his father is in his last days and years instead of saying thank you dad for all that you've done he's saying i'm

going to try to get a little bit more out of you. when you think of the message of bernie sanders that his whole campaign was summed up by millionaires and billionaires, you can see democrats will now say this is a millionaire and billionaire that not only is going to lie to you but also is someone who is going to change the tax code in order to benefit his friends. >> dan goldman, beyond being nine pages of blowing up the myth of donald trump's personal story there are legal stories in here and the department of tax is going to look into this. mario de blasio is authorized to look into all of this. a lot of stuff is 43, 45 years old. is there a possibility of criminal prosecution here? >> there's not a possibility of criminal prosecution for that stuff and the stuff in the '90s. it's exceeded the statute of limitationes. >> so where does this this end up? >> i think what they would do is what eddie said which is this is a starting point and if someone is engaged in this sort of activity and conspiring perhaps with his father to do it, then

you start looking more recently. these are the means and methods that donald trump used to build his empire. there's no reason to think that he just stopped upon his father's death when he took everything over. so they will certainly be looking into that. and we should be clear, a lot of this stuff while it seems shady and suspicious is perfectly legal. many people are back stopped by their parents in various ways and clearly donald trump's father was trying to pass money on to his children and a lot of it was legal ways, he created companies in their names and for them with money that never was actually his, it was ultimately earned money. that's okay, but a lot of this other stuff and the misrepresentations is what is suspect and i expect that the new york state authorities will look into more recent conduct. >> and, you know, mika, we use the name bernie sanders, how this would feed into the democrats message and bernie sanders' message. forget bernie sanders.

what about donald trump's message in 2016? he was the populist. he was the one running ads at the end of the campaign, the two minute bannon ad that talked about how the international order, the banking order, the tax code, everything was rigged against the poor for the benefit of global elites and the richest people in america and across the world. this undercuts the message for donald trump. forget bernie sanders. what he said in 2016. >> it does. it's an incredible, incredible revealing report. daniel goldman, threw very much. still ahead on "morning joe," it's another disturbing headline linked to the trump administration's immigration policies. inspectors find nooses in the cells of a detention facility. jacob soboroff has been covering the story from the part and joins us ahead with that. plus senate judiciary

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comcast has connected more than six-million low-income people to low-cost, high-speed internet at home. i'm trying to do some homework here. so they're ready for anything. state and united states army veteran jason kander has announced he is dropping his bid for kansas city mayor citing ptsd and depression. he made the announcement in a post on the site medium. it's been 11 years since kander left afghanistan as an army officer, but the democrat says his military tour still impacts him every day. he writes that he went online four months ago and filled out va forms but adds, quote, i left boxes unchecked, too scared to acknowledge my true symptoms. i knew i needed help and yet i still stopped short. i was afraid of the stigma. i was thinking about what it could mean for my political future if someone found out.

that was stupid, he writes, and things have gotten even worse since. he continues, last tuesday i found out that we were going to raise more money than any kansas city mayoral campaign ever has in a single quarter, but instead of celebrating that accomplishment i find myself on the phone with the va's veterans crisis line tear flee conceding that, yes, i have had suicidal thoughts and it wasn't the first time. kander says he finally went to the va in kansas city on monday for help and hopes to return to public life when he is feeling better >> and i hope he does. >> it's an incredibly courageous and brave hinge to do. he is screwed and steve kornacki can tell us as one of the rising stars in the democratic party. there are so many veterans groups who have said, thank you, jason kander, for putting out in the open something that too often is in the shadows and costs people lives. he will save lives by what he did yesterday. >> you don't have to live in the

shadows, you can come back and you can take time for yourself and there's nothing wrong with that and i appreciate him talking about mental health challenges out in the open and helping bring these very real health issues into the mainstream. joining us now msnbc contributor and author of "how the right lost its mind" charlie sykes, his latest column explains how the gop became trump's party. also with us national political correspondent for nbc news and msnbc steve kornacki, his new book is "the red and the blue: the 1990s and the birth of political tribalism." a lot to get to, joe. >> charlie, let's talk about your column. there's so many times that we see donald trump speak and we're not shocked by what donald trump says because he is donald trump. what is always surprising, though, is what you see in the background, if it's somebody like, for instance, holding a sign that says women for trump

while he's mocking and ridiculing dr. ford. you sit there and go, wait a second, this goes well beyond the guy up front. this is, in fact, an infection that has spread, a virus that has spread across our entire party, my former party and i don't know if it's your former party yet, but it is definitely donald trump's party. >> yeah, there's no question about it. i mean, you are exactly right. look, we shouldn't be shocked by donald trump, we shouldn't be shocked by the fact that he is a narcissist and a chronic liar. we all know that if you were paying attention. what is genuinely shocking, though, and it continues to shock me is the degree to which republicans and conservatives have said basically we're okay with all of that. you mentioned that rally last night. so donald trump is mocking this woman who came forward to allege sexual assault. he is mocking her. what's extraordinary about that is watching the crowd, is watching how donald trump has

moved the window of acceptability. conservatives in this country have adapted to donald trump. donald trump did not adapt to the presidency so what's happened is the conservative movement, because they're tribal or transactional or it's a cult of personality or they just hate democrats and the media more, they have adjusted their standards because donald trump has not adjusted to the presidency or become anyone other than who he, in fact, is. >> yeah. i'm wondering, steve kornacki, if you look at some of the recent polls whether it was public opinion strategies or republican pollster that saw massive support for brett kavanaugh in north dakota, heidi heitkamp's home state where she has fallen behind in some polls pretty substantially. or in west virginia where joe manchin is running for reelection. or if you look at the two florida races which have both tightened up. andrew gel tin, that race has tightened up.

has this kavanaugh battle gotten the tribes back into their collective sides and tightened up a lot of these races? >> it's amazing. i was looking at some of the national polling on the kavanaugh nomination and i did a mental exercise where i replaced kavanaugh with trump and the polling numbers looked just like -- almost identical to when you poll for donald trump. the gender gap on the brett kavanaugh nomination is about 27 points between men having a small support for kavanaugh among men, massive opposition among women. that is the exact same story when it comes to donald trump, the overall number in the national poll on brett kavanaugh support for kavanaugh's confirmation 42%. pretty much donald trump's approval rating these days. the opposite 48%. you will see his disapproval might hit 50, 51, but pretty much one was has replaced the other and we have defaulted in ten days, two weeks of controversy over these allegations of involving brett kavanaugh. we've done what we've seemed to do on just about everything in politics. we've defaulted to our partisan

tribal really positions on this and the numbers i think are starting to reflect that. >> steve, in reading your book, you know, i'm taken back to my own days as a reporter in the '90s starting out in washington with the clinton impeachment and seeing all of these characters back again in washington. trump and newt gingrich and ken star and ken star's people, brett kavanaugh included. what do you draw from what kavanaugh learned from his experience in the '90s in this crucial crucible period that he is now applying in his bid to resurrect his nomination? >> it's fascinating to watch. there is a couple things that i sort of noticed about that. number one is just first of all you think back to kavanaugh playing that role with ken star in 1998 and bill clinton's critics in 1998, bill bennett had comes to mind, people who said bill clinton had proven himself morally unfit for the presidency by his conduct. you have people 20 years later who are defending him. it's interesting sometimes when you start talking to them about

that they draw a line from one to the other and they say that bill clinton and his defenders, bill clinton and the media, bill clinton and culture, whatever they want to say they say basically broke politics -- broke the rules in 1998 and got away with it and their answer basically 20 years later was to find their own bully, donald trump, to fight back. that's sort of i think how some justify it because when you see that shift from where they were 20 years ago so where they are now, they make a connection between the two. it's interesting to hear sometimes. >> let me ask you this question because on one level we could talk as steve has talked about the kind of divide, the partisan divide, what some people will describe as people moving into their tribes, but last night in mississippi what did we see? we saw a kind of ugliness, a kind of lack of compassion, a kind of -- a kind of bitterness that's at the bottom of the cup of this current moment. you know, it's the what aboutism kind of thing, the equivalences that we've made in scribing the

political landscape is one thing, but there's something deeply ugly at the heart of trumpism that we need to talk about. that doesn't seem to at least in my mind and i want to hear your opinion on this, isn't captured by a partisan divide. there's something else here unless we want to attribute some ugliness to a particular side. could you say a little bit about this for me? >> i think you're exactly right. you know, this is what i'm trying to focus on is not -- we're focused on donald trump because it's so fascinating but you shift the frame and ask what is he doing to us? what is he doing to the american character and to the american soul? what sort of, you know, dark impulses is he encouraging? look, this is where political leadership and thought leadership is so important. lincoln talked about appealing to the better angels of our nature. what is donald trump appealing to? what is he tapping into? and i think that's the question at the end of the day, the day after donald trump is gone, how

has our culture changed, how has our politics changed? what sorts of impulses, in fact, are we going to have? so i'm really disturbed about that and that's the thing that's the most shocking. politicians come and go, but our culture and the kind of things that you're describing here, you know, maybe they were preexisting condition, but they were not necessarily inevitable. it was not inevitable that the president of the united states would be tapping into those kinds of -- i don't know, whatever you describe it as the ugliness. and it's not going to get any better. whatever you're seeing now, imagine it's going to be, you know -- it will be on steroids between now and the midterms and then lord knows what 2020 is going to look like. >> all right. charlie sykes and steve kornacki, thank you both. steve's new book is "the red and the blue: the 1990s and the birth of political tribalism." >> must read. >> must raid. must get. steve, thank you. don't be mad at me, okay? >> i'm thrilled that you got to mention it. >> still ahead, two new watchdog

reports detail the problems surrounding the trump administration's family separation policy. one report finds homeland security officials were unprepared and another describes the harsh conditions inside one immigration facility. we will go through all of that. plus, he caught the nation's attention when he came from behind to win his party's nomination for florida governor. now mayor andrew gillum is locked in a tight general election battle, the florida democrat joins us next on "morning joe." florida democrat joi unss next on "morning joe." how can you spot ambition? is it written on our faces? or something woven into the dna of the doers, the determined, the driven? and while the bar keeps getting higher, ambition gives us the power to tackle any obstacle.

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you've got this guy who has basically rolled in with a sledgehammer and the question is what happens next. i think, you know, what happens next is children get separated from their parents at the border and the department of health and human services can't figure out whose parents belong to which child or puerto rico gets hit by a hurricane and they can't figure out how many people were killed or on tax day the irs computers shut down. you are seeing this, i think, very slow moving and therefore very hard to attend to crisis. >> best selling author michael lewis yesterday on "morning joe" listing the very real impacts from the lack of experience in all corners of the trump

administration. high on that list, immigration. in a pair of new dhs reports from the office of the inspector general on just how badly that incompetence played into the family operation ice crisis at the border. joining us jacob soboroff who has been on the story from the very beginning. you wonder, maybe you can tell us, is it incompetence leading to i'm hue plant or just plain inn plumity. >> these two reports confirm the horrifying details that you and i and joe and all of us have talked a lot about and unfortunately i got to see with my own eyes. it took the administration months to get there, but this department of homeland security office of inspector general report, the first one, basically says the administration was not prepared for this family separation policy and sort of the practices that they put into place made this policy far worse. we heard a lot about kids not

being in cages. well, the report says not only were kids in cages but they were in these cages for longer than the 72-hour period that anybody is supposed to be kept in these border patrol holding cells. we were told in this report that the computer database that the administration said was supposed to be there in order to reunite these children and keep track of them never actually existed in the first place and we were told as well that the idea that people were being turned away from ports of entry and then going and crossing illegally because of administration policy wasn't true. well, it turns out that also was true. so all these lines that we got fed from the administration over the summer, this report basically tears apart. and then just quickly i want to talk about this other report that came out on the same day about the nation's largest private immigration detention facility, it's here in southern california. just really sickening stuff. i've been inside that facility. probably the worst detail of that one is nooses were found inside detainees cells and we know that separated fathers many

separated fathers were actually held inside this facility, inadequate medical care, inadequate detention facilities and increasing segregation, isolation for these people, we are looking at some of those nooses there. i got to go inside there and talk to one of the separated fathers that was inside there just a few weeks ago. take a look at this. this is what he told me. >> you say you're happy but you spent months here in detention here. had you known and not signed this you could have been back together with your son much earlier. you're sitting here in your orange jumpsuit, you know, in your prison clothes with your wristband. what is it like to be here? how do you feel to have been here all summer? >> translator: i feel like why did they deceive me with this paperwork. they didn't explain exactly what it was. i wouldn't have suffered all this time being separated from my son. >> that's one story. there are over 2,600 stories of kids being separated, these

conditions are things we reported all summer long and this is america, this is what we're hearing from the donald trump administration. >> these two reports tell us that the department of homeland security wasn't ready for this child separation ready for the child separation policy and the conditions were terrible inside some of these facilities. what do the reports tell you about what can be going on now with hundreds of kids moved into tents in texas where there is no schooling and no legal representation? >> you are talking about that giant tent city on the border. i was down there a week and a half ago. the population in that facility is exploding because of the policies of the trump administration to intimidate parents from picking up their children from these detention facilities. it is on federal property. it means that facility is not required to have state and local

inspections like other health and human services facilities. the children that are in there are not subject to the same oversight and rules and regulations and the quality of care that they might get elsewhere. lots of questions still about that facility. i think there are about 1,600 kids there today that we don't know the answer to. >> sothank you for staying on this. joining us now, the mayor of tallahassee, florida, the democratic nominee for governor in the state of florida. thanks for being with us sblmpt dethank you for having me. >> you are the mayor of tallahassee. what is going on with the seminoles? >> don't put me in that position. there is growing to take place. being born in miami and finishing high school in gainesville, florida, and being mayor of tallahassee i have statewide teams. >> you shocked a lot of people across the country. you became a prominent figure in

the democratic party immediately when you won the primary there. you have been ahead in every poll since that day. one had you up by nine points, the most recent one showed tightening in that state against the republican. what is the number one issue people ask you about? >> we have been all over the state of florida. i was in a pretty red area of our state. we are hearing people concerned about health care. we are a state that did not expand medicaid for over 800,000 most medically needed. my opponent has said that people get access to health care because they can go to an

emergency room. my grandmother just passed from cervical cancer earlier this week. >> i'm sorry. >> thank you for that. the truth is many people in our state live with preexisting conditions every day. the fact that you would have a sitting member of congress, now former member talk about the fact that insurance companies should be able to discriminate again to me is out of step with the experiences of floridians and causes people to be stressed out over an illness. >> as you talk about taking care of people in medicine, you proposed medicare for all. by some estimates it would cost $30 trillion over a decade. the estimates say if you doubled federal income tax and doubled federal corporate tax you wouldn't cover that cost.

what do you say to the people of florida if there was medicare for all? >> my endorsement is at the federal level. there have been conservative reports that have shown that the system can save as much as $3 trillion if we went that direction while also covering more people. as my job as the governor of the state of florida it will be to close the uninsurance gap that exists in our state. one in five people don't have access to health care. it is not some abstract thought for me. as a kid growing up in miami i remember having to wait for the free dental clinic to come through the neighborhood in order to have our teeth cleaned. there were people terrified of getting sick because if they can't go to work they can't earn a wage. we have to reduce that level of anxiety and pressure. health care is the most billowing part of the state's

budget. >> so mr. mayor, how do you make that argument to people from my part of the state, northern florida, from pensacola to panama city? there are a lot of people who voted for donald trump in 2016 because they believed they would get better health care, cheaper health care. he promised it. how do you explain to those voters who may reflexively want to support donald trump that what has happened over the past two years makes their prospects for having good affordable health care for themselves and their children even more of a distant reality? >> joe, you know this well because this impacts our part of the state. i'm in tallahassee, campaigned heavily over in your part of the state during the primary and won your home county in the primary

election. those are the areas that are disproportionately impacted by the cost of health care, the absence of having that health care. what we have to do and what i would have hoped we would have done in the past is we have to talk to folks. we have to let them know that we hear them, see them and we have a plan to do something about what their lived experiences are. nobody in our state ought to be terrified of getting sick, fear from being one illness away from bankruptcy. in that part of the state people are terrified about not having access to health care. what i am going to do is we travelled to parts of the state that have not seen a democratic nominee before. we were in palm coast the other day, went down to sarasota just yesterday. again, people are coming out. i think people really underestimate the energy that is happening on the ground. people are frustrated, angry and they want an elected official to

do something about it. >> what is the nature of your ground game? a lot of this depends upon getting the unlikely voters out particularly african-american voters and young folk. what are you doing specifically to appeal to the folk who aren't showing up in the polls? >> you are speaking my language. i believe that every race is won and lost on the ground. that is what we did in the primary. we had 150,000 voters turn out who had never voted before or had not voted in the previous three elections. it is my intention to double that number. that is why we are going to remote places. for too long the race has been treated as if it is the electoral college. the one more vote may come from anywhere. we are putting as many resources as we can muster into a ground game, motivating and moving our voters. we can't win if we don't go there. i am prepared to go there and put into place a serious

operation. >> thank you very much for being on the show. good luck. >> thank you all very much. still ahead on "morning joe." >> i thought her testimony was very compelling. she looks like a very fine woman to me. certainly, she was a very credible witness. she was very good in many respects. >> that was president trump on friday. and now the days after a complete 180 as the president mocks dr. ford's testimony. we will have his comments plus dick durbin. ments plus dick durbin. how can you spot ambition? is it written on our faces? or something woven into the dna of the doers, the determined, the driven? and while the bar keeps getting higher, ambition gives us the power to tackle any obstacle. opening the doors to bigger leaps, larger goals and financial freedom.

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for drivers with accident forgiveness, liberty mutual won't raise their rates because of their first accident. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪ sir, i would like to thank you. my wife thinks i'm one of the greatest investors in the world. two years ago she thought i was a total loser. we need the truth. how dare you treat a woman like that. we need more time for the fbi. the fbi has to do a more thorough search. i hear biden wants to take me to the back of the barn. i would like to take him. we have to negotiate. yes. beautiful accent. i wish i had his accent. i would have been president 15 years ago if i had his accent. >> president trump did plenty of impressions last night including

repeatedly mocking the memory of dr. affochristine blasey ford w has accused the supreme court nominee brett kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her as a teenager. one thing president trump did not bring up is the expose athat calls into question everything he said about his fortune. trump engaged in tax schemes. according to the special investigation trump was earning $200,000 in today's money by the age of 3 and was a millionaire by the age of 8. it is a far cry from this -- >> i mean, my whole life really has been a no. i fought through it. i talk about it. it's not been easy for me. it has not been easy for me. i started off in brooklyn. my father gave me a small loan of a million dollars. >> my father gave me a very

small loan and i built it into a company worth many billions of dollars. that is the kind of thinking that our country needs. >> you know, sometimes he had to walk half a mile just to get to his gold plated rolls royce that his dad gave him when he was like 4. you have this legend that donald trump has created, this legendary deal maker, my dad gave me nothing, very hard for me. he was richie rich. his dad was shoveling $2 million to him by the time he was 8. ended up giving him and his siblings half a billion dollars. they did it, of course, it seems illegally. donald took richie rich -- he said i'm going to go to atlantic city and came back to manhattan

$9 billion in debt. what a legend, willie. we should all have his hard scrabble in existence as donald trump. >> even his version of the story made me laugh. i got a small loan of a million dollars. i would love a small loan of a million dollars. this is an extraordinary piece of reporting in the "new york times." we will dig into the details. the long and short of it is according to the "new york times" through tax schemes he arrived at about $413 million from his father, not the one million dollar loan. >> he had tough beginnings. i really don't have a whole lot of room to talk here because you know what my dad gave me after college? >> what? >> $100 and eastern airline stock.

>> a visionary. >> i have been living large ever since. >> this is an incredible investigative report. we'll dig deeper into it. we have msnbc contributor mike barnacle and contributor editor at the weekly standard. >> his father gave him all of his sweaters. >> my father never wore a sweater in his life. >> it's a nice sweater sbrmpt dh i think you look comfortable. . >> national political reporter is with us. >> i got a rusted grand am. >> rusted grand am. was that your dad's? >> yep. >> polish. let's get to our lead story this morning. believe it or not -- we'll get back to the investigation by the "new york times" in a moment.

first, the fbi's investigation into the allegations against judge brett kavanaugh could be wrapped up as soon as today. two sources familiar with the matter tell nbc news that the probe could have been closed as early as last night. that comes as president trump says the sexual misconduct and assault allegations against kavanaugh mark a difficult time for young men in the country. the president made the remarks as he departed the white house yesterday afternoon and reiterated his message at his rally in mississippi last night where he also for the first time directly mocked dr. christine blasey ford. >> i say that it is a very scary time for young men in america when you can be guilty of something that you may not be guilty of. this is a very, very difficult time. what's happening here has much more to do than even the

appointment of a supreme court justice. it really does. you can be somebody that was perfect your entire life and somebody could accuse you of something. it doesn't necessarily have to be a woman. somebody can accuse you of something and you are automatically guilty. >> this is an important time for our country. this is a time when your father, when your husband, when your brother, when your son could do great. mom, i did great in school and worked so hard. mom, i'm so pleased to tell you i just got a fantastic job with ibm, i just got a fantastic job with general motors. i am so proud. mom, a terrible thing just happened. a person who i have never met said that i did things that were horrible and they are firing me from my job.

i don't know what to do. mom, what do i do, mom? what do i do, mom? it's a damn sad situation. what he is going through, 36 years ago this happened. i had one beer. i had one beer. well, do you think -- it was one beer. how did you get home? i don't remember. where is the place? i don't remember. how many years ago? i don't know. i don't know. what neighborhood was it in? i don't know. where is the house? i don't know. upstairs, down stairs. i had one beer. that's the only thing i remember. >> this is why i said the day of the hearings began that this is

exactly what donald trump loves and wants, this type of issue, this type of problem with the supreme court nominee because he loves to sow doubt in people and shove in that vulgar disparaging angle towards kind of one of the cruxes of this argument is due process and finding out the truth and something that i think good patriots and good men and women are struggling with. trump loves to bring it down into the ditch. he loves to hurt them and bring an ugly truth to this. that is you can hurt people with the words and the president does it from the podium of the presidency. i find it to be utterly disgusting. >> the president, i suppose, could have actually given a nuanced argument about due process. >> good argument, an important one. >> all women, not only in the court of law, but when their lifetime reputation is on the

line, we have to afford them due process. we want to be a better country. we want to make sure that men and women alike are still considered to be innocent until proven otherwise. of course, that is not where he went. he went, like you said, down in the mud. really, it's interesting that donald trump kept talking about what do i do, mom? he talked about all of these scenarios where innocent men can be framed. it wasn't as strong coming from a man who if he had a chance to talk to his mom in 2016 would have said, what do i do mom, billy bush was wearing a hot mic and they caught me saying disparaging things about women?

what do i do? do i lie my way out of it? because it really showed what i think of women. he just plowed right through it. >> allegedly i directed a payment to a former porn star with whom i had an affair while my wife was home with our child. president trump, although the way he delivered it, it is appalling to a lot of people and making the case that so many people agree with which is that this woman, this dr. ford, this witness in this story is not credible and that judge kavanaugh is being railroaded by the media and by democrats. >> i think two things. one is i think it is significant that the president who is very ginger and very careful on this topic for almost two weeks came out swinging like this. i think everyone says he is an intuitive politician. i think there is data,

significant data that the treatment of kavanaugh is goosing republican sentiment and sympathy. we see it in florida. the mason dixon poll showed a closing in the governor's race. we see in polling in the dakotas that heidi hidecamp is ten points behind with kavanaugh as the single most important issue. i think that they are seeing that this may be down to a republican benefit because dr. christine blasey ford's testimony, we still don't have a single corroboration of an eyewitness to confirm her testimony and the testimony of the two other supposed victims of kavanaugh's degradations.

one seems to have completely collapsed in credibility and there is no established truth to the ramirez allegations, either, thus giving strength to the idea that kavanaugh has been unfairly treated and has not gotten due process. trump is playing on that. still ahead, what mitch mcconnell is saying about brett kavanaugh's potential of reaching the supreme court. new polling shows the pressure back home for those few senators still sitting on the fence. you're watching "morning joe." . a g "morning joe." . it's time for sleep number's fall sale on the

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. senate majority leader mitch mcconnell promises that the senate will vote on the nomination of brett kavanaugh. >> we will be voting this week so the fbi report will be finished and we will be voting this week on the kavanaugh

nomination. >> but it still remains uncertain if republicans have enough votes to confirm president trump's pick for the supreme court. jeff flake, susan collins and lisa murcowsky are declining to report how they will vote. and then this, new polling from both of their states show the pressure they are facing with their confirmation votes. the poll shows 56% of voters in north dakota support kavanaugh's nomination. 26% oppose. in west virginia, 58% of voters support kavanaugh's nomination while 28% say they are opposed to it. >> they are a republican

pollster but do the republican half of the nbc news polls. there has been a tightening since all of this began. a lot of republicans have come home in the state of florida in the gillam race. you can go to other states that show the race is tightening. i'm wondering, do you think that perhaps donald trump did see data that shows that this is driving conservative voting base back home back to their tribe? because many people in the media have been seeming to rush to judgment? >> of course, he did. it played exactly to donald trump's strength. as we have said many times, the one thing he is an expert in is resentiment, specifically white male resentment. he used it yesterday to further the cause of his candidates, of

conservatism and of whatever else he has in his mind. we don't want to know what is on his mind. this is the first time in the lifetime of this country that we have a president of the united states who literally almost every day takes to the country in order to divide the country. that's what he did yesterday. and heidi, he does it this time for the first time again i think in history with the complete cooperation or at least complicit silence of an entire party, the republican party especially in the united states senate. do you know covering washington, covering the house and the senate of anyone who has plans to say what the president did last night and the night before that is just wrong? >> so many other times when we have sat here and you have asked me that question, the answer is no. i have some data that i think is

not gotten out enough and is really under appreciated that explains not only trump's conduct but the response that trump got to his conduct last night. that is this. a week ago we had an nbc poll that asked the question if the allegations by dr. christine blasey ford against brett kavanaugh are true should he still be confirmed? 54% of republicans said yes. these are the numbers that i call so what if true. it is a discussion that we probably need to have in this country when you have so many people who believe that this is just boys will be boys behavior that explains maybe some of the anger that you see in the mocking and even the sample poll groups that we have seen. do you remember the round table of women that cnn held, people were making fun of it.

they said i don't get it. boys will be boys. these are numbers that i think maybe we need to just have a discussion about that there is a significant chunk of the republican party that believes that even if the allegations are true it is not a big deal and he should just be confirmed. there is the due process question that john talked about. i'm sure a lot of people also feel he is not getting due process because there are no corroborators. they are not talking to the potential corroborators. i have been covering this very closely. i have been in touch with people who believe they have material evidence. they cannot get through to the fbi. my source yesterday sent me some of the information about how much she has done to try to reach out to the fbi. she keeps getting sent back to some automated tip system.

>> i don't even know him. i met him for the first time a few weeks ago. it's not like i want to protect my friend. president trump says he doesn't personally know brett kavanaugh but law analyst does. he says he wouldn't vote to confirm him. he explains why next on "morning joe." . how can we say when you book direct at choicehotels.com you always get the lowest price on our rooms, guaranteed? let's say it in a really low voice. carl? lowest price, guaranteed. just stick with badda book. badda boom. book now at choicehotels.com

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♪ joining us now, editor and chief of law fair and an msnbc legal analyst benjamin wittis. >> thank you for being with us. thank you for the law fair podcast. >> he loves it. >> along with my daily nutrients. it's the only way i get through the day. it's extraordinary. let's talk about brett kavanaugh. i was just going on a little rant before that i thought there were a lot of wild accusations going out there. that being said, you know him

and have known him and believe he shouldn't be on the supreme court. why is that? >> i have known brett kavanaugh for 20 years. i have always liked him. i was excited when he was nominated because it struck me as by far the most attractive nominee among the people that trump was considering. he is somebody who i have always thought of as a distinguished conservative judge whose career i have admired. i believe that christine blasey ford's story as presented thursday before the senate judiciary committee is frankly more credible and believable than his defense against it. i also believe he did not show

the sort of candor about a range of things that one should expect and demand from a supreme court nominee or any judge even when under intense personal pressure of the sort that he is clearly under. i also think he showed a frankly partisan and conspiratorial streak that in my experience with him i have never seen before. and i was deeply shocked by. for all of those reasons i was just left after thursday thinking that i cannot support his nomination anymore. >> it's geiwillie geist. there were some people who watched judge kavanaugh's testimony and thought even if he is not guilty of what he is accused of here by dr. ford, the temperament he showed in the room and hot headedness and a

bit of a political vent talking about a clinton conspiracy against him, he sounded political. are you convinced by those arguments that even if the dr. ford nomination doesn't hold up, his performance on thursday means he shouldn't be on the bench? >> i think the temperament and partisanship he showed are deeply upsetting. i don't know how you ask a reasonable pro choice democrat to be comfortable with his sitting on a case that might say involve overturning roe v. wade or partisan gerrymandering or any of the other many issues on which the parties are split after he has looked the country in the eye and said this whole thing about christine blasey ford is simply a function of a conspiracy of democrats lying in

wait for him because he did too well in his first hearing. and i think once you have done that, you have kind of ripped the band aid off the wound and sort of showed a side of yourself that is really not what we want in a justice. >> coming up on "morning joe," senator dick durbin is standing by. he joins us in just a moment. don't miss your chance to attend the know your value massive work shop on december 1 in san francisco. it's going to be amazing. join me for inspiring discussions and work shops with special guests senator harris, elizabeth fargus and many more who will arm you with the tools you need to grow your value. women of california, this is for you. now is your chance to enter the grow your value contest.

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it's my job to protect as a public safety,pg&e, keeping the powerlines clear while also protecting the environment. the natural world is a beautiful thing. the work that we do helps protect it. public education is definitely a big part of our job, to teach our customers about the best type of trees to plant around the powerlines. we want to keep the power on for our customers. we want to keep our communities safe. this is our community. this is where we live. we need to make sure that we have a beautiful place for our children to live. together, we're building a better california. what he is going through, 36 years ago this happened. i had one beer. i had one beer. well, how did you get home?

i don't remember. how did you get there? i don't remember. how many years ago was it? i don't know. i don't know. i don't know. what neighborhood was it in? i don't know. where is the house? i don't know. upstairs, down stairs, where was it? i had one beer. >> there is no time and no place for remarks like that. to discuss something this sensitive at a political rally is just not right. it's just not right. i wish he hadn't have done it. i just can say it is kind of appalling. >> that was senator jeff flake reacting to president trump's remarks last night at a rally in mississippi. joining us now senate democrat dick durbin of illinois. you put out a statement on friday saying you would vote no on kavanaugh.

this was before the fbi investigation was launched. you pushed hard for an fbi investigation. you pushed judge kavanaugh during his testimony to commit to an investigation. do you wish that the fbi agents would talk to both judge kavanaugh and dr. ford as they have not yet. >> they should speak to any witness and that would include dr. ford as well as judge kavanagh. as far as the fbi investigation there isn't one of us who knows what they are doing. we continue to get the reports of people reaching them with important information. they can't get through. i just can't tell you where it stands. i'm counting on the fbi to do a professional job on behalf of an organization which we respect as the most important and probably the best criminal investigation agency in the world. >> they are professionals, as you know. what is the explanation you have

received or what can you surmise about why they wouldn't have interviewed the two key witnesses. they have to have this done by friday. beyond that, why wouldn't they interview those people? >> my theory is that if dr. ford is interviewed they have to interview judge kavanaugh and those who are handling his nomination do not want him to be put into a position of having to explain some of the things which he said before the committee. >> why would the fbi concede that point to the white house? >> they shouldn't concede it to anyone. they were given a responsibility of a thorough professional nonpartisan investigation. at the end of the day the future and the reputation of this agency is at stake. >> you expressed concerns well before we knew dr. ford's name, concerns about judge kavanaugh in the area of presidential authority and how he might rule

if a decision came to the supreme court regarding the russia investigation. i don't think you were satisfied with the answers you got during that questioning. i guess my question is, even with dr. ford in the equation, there wasn't really a chance you were going to vote for judge kavanaugh? >> i was leaning against him from the start. as the evidence started building up it became worrisome. it wasn't just a question on where he stood on privacy and preexisting conditions under our health care plans. it really came down to a fundamental question. this is the wrong supreme court justice at this moment in history. he has an extraordinary view that a president should be hands off, leave him alone. now he has the view back in the clinton era it was the opposite. at this moment in history we need a president to be held accountable. this president doesn't want to be held accountable and wants someone who agrees with him. >> you just said that the apparent lack of questioning of

people like dr. ford and judge kavanaugh puts the fbi's future and reputation at stake. those were your words. in this case the fbi is operating as a client of the white house of the president's counsel. so what is your instinct about the white house's caring about the fbi's future reputation given the fact that the president has malined the fbi for months now? >> it is not high on their priority list. the highest priority is brett kavanaugh. if we have to we will give members time to read it and let's go. i think that is the priority. we would like to see the order that came from the white house that started the investigation with the fbi. let me say one thing that i hope you will reach back into your archives and find the opening statement in this conversation

with the white house. it came from kellyanne conway. it was about three weeks ago. she said two things that i remember very clearly. she said we are not going to ignore dr. ford. we are not going to insult dr. ford. look at what happened last night. tell me that that wasn't an insult to a woman trying to bring back her best, most vivid memories of one of the most horrible days in her life and to mock her at a political rally as the president did last night is certainly beneath the dignity of the white house. >> you weren't surprised. >> the president held back after kellyanne conway's opening statement for about three days. he started piling up those tweets and all the comments and speeches since. >> i'm going to use some charged langua language. the inspector general just released a report about children and folks who have been detained. it seems profoundly racist.

how do you hold someone accountable in this administration for what seems to be a very evil policy? >> this inspector general's report tells us 2,700 children separated from their parents at the border, 136 are still held by this government separate from their parents. i know one case personally. i sat in an immigration courtroom in chicago and watched a 4-year-old boy struggle to play with a match box car. he reached the point he won't speak to his mother on the phone. they urge her to tell him to start eating. he has reverted to diapers though he is 4 years old. this child's background and psychology is being impacted by this experience. it is unthinkable that we have not removed secretary nielsen from the head of the dhs. >> how does she sit in that position? how does she not resign and get fired?

the administration was warned plain and simple about the impact to family separations on children and families. they were warned. she signed off on the policy and she had that humiliating press conference or briefing with reporters defending it. and speaking out of both sides of her mouth and yet these situations, this fallout continues and she still sits there at her job. >> let me tell you what the inspector general came up with is that preverbal children were being taken away from their parents and moved thousands of miles apart from their parents without any identification, no plastic bracelet, no finger prints, moved them through the system, a system that had computers that could not speak to one another. as a result, many of these kids, 29 of them at this point, we have no idea where their parents are. we have created these orphans at

the border by government policy. it is time for secretary neilsen to go. >> there are three branches in our government still. the president of the united states it seems to me cannot by himself have such a heartless policy that is causing irreparable harm to children who are being incarcerated. what can you do? what should the united states federal court system be doing? what should the state courts be doing? i cannot believe it has been going on this long and we still can't get the children reunited with their parents. >> if a majority in congress felt strongly they can do something about it. you know that from your own service in congress. a majority happens to support the president at this moment. i can't quite understand it. thank goodness the judicial branch is coming to their aid and trying to find some way to

bring this terrible chapter in american history to an end. >> senator dick durbin, thank you very much for being on the show. >> one other point i want to raise with you. you look tired and exasperated this morning. how long is it going to take you to recover from a 13 inning wildcard loss? and winter begins for you people in chicago today. >> all i have to say is go bears. i stayed up watching. >> i think he looks okay. >> bears look good. >> thank you very much for being on the show. speaking of football, still ahead inside the true origins of donald trump's gripe with the nfl dating back to the 1980s and how trump's demands back then other quarterback doug flutie may have been a precursor to his

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today if you hit too hard, they hit too hard, 15 yards, throw him out of the game. they had that last week. i watched for a couple of minutes. two guys just beautiful tackle, boom, 15 yards. the referee gets on television. his wife is sitting at home, she's so proud of him. they're ruining the game. right? >> it's been a little more than a year since donald trump waged war on the nfl. our next guest reveals the true root of his grudge against the league, which can be traced back to trump's ownership of the new jersey generals, a team that was part of a short-lived league called the united states football league of the 1980s. the usfl. joining us now "new york times" best-selling author of eight books, jeff pearlman. his latest book is "football for a buck," how much of trump's behavior in office was foreshadowed by his tenure in that defunct football league.

also with us, mark leibovich. >> two great books. >> i'm in my wheel house here. i'm ready, yeah. i'm going to start off. >> kick off the questions. >> here we go. >> jeff, this book is so fun, such a page turner, there's so many incredible stories and donald trump is at the center of a lot of it. so i'm just going to pick one. we can go from there. donald trump wrote a letter to other league owners in the usfl, back in the day, insisting they contribute to the salary of his player, heisman trophy winning quarterback doug flutey. the letter reads this. written by donald trump. "as you are aware i would come back and ask the owners to bear some of the costs of doug's contract. i did not need doug as a player, but felt the league desperately needed someone or something fast, as it turns out it was more successful than even our wildest expectations. everyone is now benefiting from

doug flutey. i would appreciate you putting on the next agenda the allocation of doug flutey's costs to each team. he drafts a player on his team and wants to spread the costs around because it was such brilliant. >> he was the mexico wall before the mexico call. donald trump signs him to a six-year $8.3 million, biggest contract in football at that time. he tells his partners at the generals, don't worry we're going to sign doug flutey, but the rest of the league is going to pay for it. his literal pitch to the other owners. he writes a letter to the commissioner and tells the other owners, i have signed doug flutey for the good of you, i am giving this to you as a gift to the league. you will pay for it. and the other owners, much like mexico, collectively gave him the middle finger and never paid a dime. >> the story of usfl, it was a fun league, had some successful franchises, some of which maybe would have become nfl

enterprises. donald trump gets in the league. new jersey generals are his team. from day one he wanted an nfl franchise. so this was a steppingstone for him which may have led to the collapse of the league. >> it was a scam. it really was a scam. he bought the generals after the first season. the first season was 1983. it was a spring league. they were on sale for $8.5 million. he paid 10 million. he gets the generals, immediately, in the lead up to the buying, i'm so excited to be a part of this league. this is a great league. i love what you're doing. he gets the generals. we need to move to fall. we have to move to fall, take on the nfl. >> immediately. >> immediately. he has a meeting with pete rosell. in this meeting he says i don't care about the usfl, you tell me what i have to do to get an nfl franchise. it was preposterous. he did it -- he basically went behind the back of the fellow owners. and pete rosell says to him, as

long as i am with the nfl you will never have a team in this league. he considered him to be a conman. >> that plants the seed of resentment with donald trump in the nfl. >> oh, god. >> again, let's get to, i mean, the times big piece and his taxes and his father funding every failed enterprise donald had for years. he is a financial fool in terms of buying the team. the team was on the market for what, $8.5 million, and he paid what? >> he paid $10 million. and his whole thing was about getting an nfl franchise. that's the only reason he did this was to get an nfl franchise. it wasn't about the usfl or the good of the league. it was about getting an nfl franchise. he led a lawsuit against the -- the usfl sued the nfl in a famous lawsuit and they famously won a dollar. that was the death of the usfl. >> do you have any sense of -- were any of these teams viable enough if the usfl had hung on, some of them could have ended up

in the nfl? >> a strike came along in '87. they've used replacement players. if the usfl had hung on two years you'd have this mass chaos and anarchy in football. there were teams, a team in jacksonville before the jaguars, a team in tennessee before the titans, a team in baltimore after the colts left, and a team in birmingham. you would have had some sort of merger inevitably. >> eddie glaude is with us. it starts as a personal gripe, and cut to the past couple of years. he turns this into a complete culture war. >> absolutely. what i'm trying to figure out, jeff, and mark, is it seems like the record is replete with examples of donald trump as a conman. that we knew who he was, and we keep getting evidence of who he currently is. how do we continue to fall for his con? that's the question i'm sitting here grappling with.

>> jeff? >> i do have one thing i will say. >> you've got no answer for that one. i don't either. >> the nfl thing drives me insane. let me just say this. donald trump -- he meets with pete rosell to get a franchise, tries suing the nfl, tries buying the buffalo bills, fails, tries buying the new england patriots, fails. he's regularly sitting there doing work during the national anthem, no crime -- >> it's a sign of protest. >> for a guy who hates the nfl he sure wants to be in the nfl. it was the club he kucould not t into. >> joe? >> that's one of many, many clubs he have never allowed to get into. and it stings, still stings every day. you know, mark leibovich, we have the coming together of two stories here, one, the usfl, and

two, the story of his father transferring millions and millions of dollars to him. he gets in the usfl. they let him in. he's the biggest champion of the usfl. then gets behind their back, tries to stab them in the back and tells rosell he wants to get into the nfl. he doesn't care for the usfl. same thing with his father who's shoveling millions and millions of dollars to him throughout his own life. at the end of his father's life he tried to screw his own dad by changing a will, according to "the new york times," and scares his father because it would be to hit detriment to bail out his son. >> there's a strain that runs through those two things, his absolute belief in the power of marketing and hype and his ability to talk through and sell anything, and just think that at the end of the day, you know, the fact will -- if they ever come out, they'll come out decades down the road, like in the "new york times" over, you

know, a 12,000 word piece which, you know, by that time he'll be halfway around the world, or in this case in the white house. so, again, i mean, i think it's just sort of part of a pattern that he essentially has built his career on, whether it's a house of cards, or, you know, the greatest marketing scam in history. >> jeff, another great anecdote in the story comes in 1984 when trump wants to sign lawrence taylor away from the giants and onto the generals. >> oh, yeah. >> and so he has a meeting with lawrence taylor's agents, and then a publicist goes by the name of john barron, starts calling around, who sounds a lot like donald trump, you go aer "we knew it was donald the whole time. he wasn't even good at changing his voice. it was embarrassing." he's going around saying trump's a genius, he got lawrence taylor to leave the giants to come to the generals which was not true. >> if you -- there are quotes all over the place from john barron, how great doug flutey is

for the league and mr. trump is a genius. it is a joke. it's a joke. >> the joke's on us. i mean, on america. >> he also hired roy cohn as his attorney for the league and told the other owners we're going to hire roy cohn, the nfl is going to want to settle immediately because they're terrified of this guy. >> the book is out now. jeff pearlman, thanks so much for being on. mark leibovich, "big game," the nfl and dangerous times. final thoughts this morning, joe scarborough, you begin. >> well, it seems that we don't know which way the kavanaugh hearings are breaking politically. if you look at a lot of polls it seems republicans are actually having a lot of people that have been going away from their candidates, starting to return home. heidi hidecamp in trouble in north dakota, gillum tough race in florida. west virginia, kavanaugh's

numbers, very strong there. it's going to be interesting to see whether kavanaugh not only gets by, but possibly gets 52, 53, 54 votes. >> you've got five, willie, go. >> go yankees. >> that's good, i like it. >> that is all. >> all right, and that does it for us this morning. stephanie ruhle picks up the coverage. hi there, i'm stephanie ruhle with a lot to cover this morning, starting with attacking the accuser, the president changes his tune on ford from credible, compelling and a very fine woman to openly mocking her. >> how did he get home? i don't remember. how did you get there? i don't remember. where is the place? i don't remember. how many years ago was it? i don't know. upstairs, downstairs, where was it, i don't know, but i had one ye beer. >> the fbi could conclude its investigation today, despite never speaking to dr. ford. mcconnell still promising a vote